


my gypsy face transfigured now

by tosca1390



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This, here, with Ichigo under the roof of her brother’s house, she can wrap her mind around and try to fix.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	my gypsy face transfigured now

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Aizen's defeat, between Ichigo's passing out and waking back up again.

*

“Urahara-san,” she says as Urahara turns towards the door from Ichigo’s bedside. “Wait, please.”

Urahara waits, his face unreadable as always. Night has settled over the Kuchiki mansion, and all of Soul Society. Ichigo, this strange, tall, grown Ichigo that Rukia doesn’t know sleeps in one of the many guest rooms. When she first returned to Soul Society, Ichigo passed out between Sado and Renji, Byakuya had been waiting at the gate, implacable and immoveable as usual, with an offer to keep Ichigo at the mansion instead of the barracks. The Fourth was overwhelmed with the injured, he had said. It made more sense to keep him with friends, to allow Urahara to care for him. 

To say Rukia has been surprised is an understatement. But her brother, still an enigma to her, always had his pride and his heart in the right place. He may not _like_ Ichigo as such, but he understands his importance. So now Ichigo sleeps in the adopted home of her youth, as do the others. 

She remains awake and at Ichigo’s side. Renji and Orihime have tried repeatedly to get her to close her eyes and rest, but she cannot. There are questions she needs to ask, answers she seeks, and rest will do nothing for her but delay everything. 

What she needs now is for Ichigo to wake up. Since he will not, she goes to the next best source. 

“What _happened_ to him?” she asks Urahara at last, stopping him at the open door of Ichigo’s room. 

Urahara slides his gaze to her, shadowed under the wide brim of his hat, finally returned to its place on his head. He has spent all day in here with her, monitoring Ichigo’s condition, though she doesn’t understand how. He has used little Kido, and sought advice from no one in the Fourth division. It makes her all the more anxious, to think that there is nothing that can be done for him in this state. There has always been _something_ , before.

“I couldn’t tell you the details, Kuchiki-san,” he says at last. “You know as well as I do that Kurosaki evolves to suit the situation.”

“But you _know_ ,” she presses, her hands tightly fisted at her sides. 

He stares down at her for a long moment, mouth curling at the edges. Her ribs press and stitch with every breath, and she can still taste the coppery tang of her blood in her mouth, but Ichigo hasn’t woken up for nearly a day now. She needs to understand what happened to him. Urahara is the only one here who can tell her, for Isshin is in the World of the Living looking after his daughters, and _that’s_ another facet of this new situation she’s working within that she is entirely unprepared for. 

This, here, with Ichigo under the roof of her brother’s house, she can wrap her mind around and try to fix. 

Urahara shrugs in his casual fashion. “Kurosaki has a capacity for power underestimated by many. He used it, and won.”

_I’ve never underestimated him_ , she wants to bite out. But it would do no good here and now. Besides, with how Urahara has always looked at the two of them, she thinks he already knows. Normally, she would be embarrassed, but now she’s too wound up to care. “Why is he still asleep then? It’s never been like this before,” she says evenly. 

In the twilight, she thinks Urahara is almost frowning. “He is losing his powers, Kuchiki-san.”

A lump settles at the base of her throat like lead. She knuckles her fists into her thighs. “Does he know?” she asks at last, voice steady. She is nothing if not graceful under pressure. 

“Yes,” he says, voice flat. “He knew what would happen to him, when he used his final attack.”

“Final attack – what does this even mean?” she asks, flabbergasted. Her eyes fall to the still long body tucked into the bed pallet. “He’s – he’s just Ichigo.”

“You of all people know what he is capable of,” Urahara says before he leaves, sliding the door shut behind him with a definitive thump of wood on wood. 

She stares at the closed door, light seeping in through the cracks and seams at the hinges and tracks, and shakes her head. Yes, she knows; but there is something more that she’s missing. 

Shirayuki hums against her hip, as in agreement.

*

Ichigo without his powers isn’t a reality she’s ready to accept quite yet. 

So, instead, she inventories his appearance and tries to make sense of it. All she comes up with is that he is Ichigo, but he doesn’t look like himself, she thinks as she sits at his side with her knees tucked up to her chest. 

Moonlight curves across the smooth floor. She traces her toes along the cool edges of shadow and pale light, watching him. His hair falls lower across his shut eyes; the breadth of his shoulders is wider, the cut of his arm sharper. Urahara had said it would take time for the effects of _whatever_ Ichigo did to wear off, and that his appearance would shift to normal again as it did. 

Her fingers curl in her lap, color rising on her throat. Resting on the table across the room, Shirayuki all but thrums, the reverberation strong in her bones. She wants to touch him, to make sure he is still warm flesh and blood under her fingertips. 

What she really wants is for him to wake up. 

Wetting her lips, she rises up on her knees and leans over him. The windows are shuttered closed against the midnight chill, and yet her skin still rises in goosebumps. The mansion is silent; the quiet weighs on her, a heavy roar in her ears. 

“You idiot,” she says at last, her fingers light at his brow, sliding into the long bright hair there. “What did you do?”

He doesn’t reply, eyes still shut and breathing shallow but even. She knocks her knuckles against his forehead lightly, and moves her hand to the long line of his throat, the hard expanse of his collarbone. She has seen him barely clothed before (she did live in his closet for months, after all; she is modest and strict, but she isn’t a saint), and he never looked quite like this. An image of him in the grove, Shinigami robes torn and covered in dirt and blood, comes unbidden. She bites the inside of his lip. 

“Wake up, Ichigo,” she murmurs into the cool silent room, her fingers finding thick familiar knots of scars across his chest. Her fingertips brush the edge of the sheet tucked at his arms. “Wake up and tell me what happened.”

Still, he remains asleep and motionless. She drops her face close to his. The aura radiating around him is striking, a wild ebb and flow of power and pressure. “I will beat it out of you if I have to,” she murmurs, her mouth skirting the edges of his. She’s felt it before, the clumsy press and wet bite of his mouth on hers, the wide span of his hands at her hips and waist and thighs. It’s a secret of theirs that she thinks may not be so secret after all, what with Byakuya bringing him here, and Renji’s sly looks. 

It doesn’t have to mean anything, she knows. Right now, though, it could mean everything. 

“Ichigo,” she repeats, her hand pressed over his sternum. She drags her mouth to his ear. She can still smell the lingering hint of battle on his skin, ashes and smoke and sand. “Wake up, fool.”

Against her cheek, his breath quickens. She turns her face to watch as his eyes open. There is a new power there, edging the dark of his eyes. Her hair falls across her cheek from behind her ear, brushing his face. 

“Rukia,” he murmurs, voice serious and reedy. 

She breathes out slowly, her fingers flexing against his chest. “Only took me three tries. Did you lose your hearing or something?”

He doesn’t crack a smile, but his hand comes up to cover hers over his heart. “It’s too soon.”

“What? What you are talking about?” she asks, voice sharpening in the air. 

His gaze fixes on hers, dark and unreadable. She has a real sense of looking at someone else, someone who Ichigo could become, but isn’t yet. “It’s too soon for me to be like this.”

“And you complain about me not giving you straight answers,” she says crossly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What did you do, Ichigo?”

His face softens from its harsh serious lines as his other hand rises from the blanket to touch her cheek, his callused and bruised fingers sliding through her loose hair. The power still crackles from his touch, raising the fine hairs at the nape of her neck on end. She wets her lips, swallowing hard. “What did you _do_?” she repeats, voice soft between them. 

“What I had to,” he says distantly. 

He’s tired, and she ought to let him sleep, but she _can’t_. “You look different. You _are_ different. What happened?”

“I’ll be back to normal soon,” he murmurs. 

“Idiot!” she hisses under her breath. 

His hand falls to her waist, pulling her onto the pallet. She falls to his chest with a sharp huff of air, their intertwined hands pressed between their bodies. Her mouth catches at his briefly. She can still taste the sweat and blood from battle on his lips. 

“I learned the final Getsuga Tensho,” he says softly, his mouth moving against hers. “I used it, Rukia. I _used_ it.”

His hands find her waist as she shifts and slings a leg over his hip, her knees at either side of him. “I don’t know what that means,” she says, though she has a good enough idea, an idea that scares her. 

“I will lose my powers,” he says. His hands catch at the belt of her plain black robes. “I am losing my powers.”

There is a muscle memory that sets in when he touches her, a catch in her stomach she can’t ignore. Hearing him say it, the sting of the words, it doesn’t fade. “Why do you look different?” she asks, pressing on, even as he peels her robes from her shoulders, baring her skin to the cool air. 

He shrugs, sitting up. Her knees press into the pallet as he smoothes his hands through her hair. She wets her lips as his hand cups her jaw. “Eh, part of the upgrade,” he says, and _there_ , he sounds like Ichigo again, not this serious somber man with his face and hands. 

“Upgrade? How much further could you have gone?” she asks incredulously, her fingers flexing into the hard muscle of his shoulders. He feels _different_ under her hands, and she finds herself longing for the old Ichigo, who was just a wild kid with enormous powers for a human and a wide swipe of a sword. 

He smirks against her mouth, his thumb light at the corner of her mouth. “To use the final Getsuga Tensho, I had to become him.”

A cold shudder runs down her spine. She shivers as his fingers curl into the soft skin of her throat. His other hand slides down the length of her body towards her hips. “Why did you do it?” she asks, as his mouth ghosts hers. 

His gaze is serious once more as his hand slides down the length of her thigh. “I had to. It comes down to me, Rukia,” he says. There is something else weighing on his words, a taste of a future she can’t bring herself to imagine. 

“You know something,” she says into his mouth, his tongue wet and warm against hers. She smoothes her hands down his chest, finding the abrupt cut and line of muscle against the old familiar ribbons of scars. “You _know_ something,” she repeats. 

His fingers slide between her thighs, into dark slick heat. She gasps into his mouth, her nails digging crescents into his battered skin. “I don’t. Not this me,” he murmurs as his fingertips slip and crest against her clit. 

She tilts her head back, warmth flushing her throat and cheeks. “I’ll beat it out of you,” she says with a low moan. 

The hand that lingers at her jaw now shifts and slides into her hair, touching and curling the ends. He drags his mouth down the line of her neck, his teeth grazing her skin. “Not in this body,” he drawls, turning them sharply so she is pressed into the pallet. Tall as he usually is, she feels incredibly dwarfed by him as he is now, his mouth at her breasts and his fingers sliding a slow one-two inside her. 

_It’s too soon for me_ rattles in her mind and her veins as his teeth catch at her skin, his thumb at her clit. He is hard against her thigh, his hips shifting restlessly against hers. Her thighs fall open even further as her hands pull at his shoulders. She feels as if it’s the first time again, and it’s all unfamiliar terrain and weird catches of skin under her fingers. But he whispers her name against the knot of scars at her sternum, the remainders of Aizen, and she shuts her eyes. 

There is a small part of her that thinks he did it in some tiny way for her, to reap what Aizen stole from her all those months ago. When Ichigo lingers near the scar and tightens his grip on her skin, she thinks she might be right. 

“ _Rukia_ ,” he murmurs over and over, voice low and hoarse in his throat. 

It _is_ Ichigo, she thinks as his mouth trails wetly at her collarbones and throat, her name reverberating from his mouth to her skin. As he slides into her, his hips pressed to hers and his thumb lingering at her clit, she arches into him and curls her fingers into his long hair. He is all warmth and powering radiating into her skin, but for how long?

His mouth catches hers, a slow long curse curling out of his throat. She moans, her mouth wet and open as he moves in her. He is all muscle and long hair and heat against her, and she has to wonder, even with his hands on her skin and his fingers at her clit and the shudders rising through her from his touch, what it means when he says _it is too soon for me_. 

She thinks she is with another kind of Ichigo now, beyond the Shinigami and beyond the Hollow. It doesn’t scare her as much as she thinks it should. 

There’s an odd damp burn behind her eyes as she comes, her bare skin pressed to his and his name lost between their mouths. Tears edge her eyelashes as she digs her fingers into his shoulders and trembles beneath him. He gasps against her mouth, heat pouring from every inch of his skin. 

“ _Rukia_ ,” he whispers against her lips, his teeth biting at her mouth, and all she can do is hold on to him, and keep him steady. Sometimes, with Ichigo, that’s all she’s ever been able to do. 

*

He’s tired by the time she’s dressed again and tucked him back in. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light, but his face looks softer, his hair just a little shorter across his brow. He is clothed now in items brought from his home by Renji and Orihime earlier. She knows they will be by to see him before he wakes again; always thinking ahead. 

“Rukia,” he murmurs, catching her hand in his. 

She kneels next to his pallet, throat flushed with warmth and the marks from his mouth. “Ichigo.”

“I won’t – “ he screws his eyes shut, his mouth twisting. Her heart catches with it, the memory of a young boy losing his mother, fighting in the hot summer rain to avenge her. “I don’t know that I’ll remember all this, yeah. It’s coming and going, with everything else.”

She slides her fingers across his chest, over the fast beat of his heart. “Idiot. We’re always okay,” she says softly.

He twines his fingers into hers, gaze just thin slits in the dim moonlight. The smell of him, of them, it lingers in the room, thickening the air between them. Later, she will open the shutters and let in the cold night air. For now, she kneels at his side and watches him struggle against his exhaustion. 

“What did you mean when you said _it’s too soon for me?_ ” she asks as she feels something in him relax, a slow drifting downwards to wherever he will go. 

Ichigo curls his fingertips against hers, a light press, before his hand falls back to the blanket. “Ask the old man,” he murmurs as he falls asleep, his eyes shut and his face set in lax lines. 

Pressing her lips together, Rukia taps his chest lightly with her fingertips before she takes her hand back. “The old man,” she murmurs to herself, an image of a sword she’s never met coming unbidden to her mind. 

At her waist once more, Shirayuki hums, a silent pressure. The weight of meetings unknown and a future unsettled sits with Rukia as the sun rises. 

*

Ichigo does not wake again for days. When he does, he remembers nothing, just as he said he might not. He is back to normal, hair a normal length. The power leeching from him for days is gone, left with just his normal spiritual pressure, diminished. 

The others edge around him, as he shrugs off the impending loss of his powers. She feels for him, aches for him, but she _knows_ what they do not, what _he_ does not. 

There is something more in store for him, and for her. 

*


End file.
